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WALT WHITMAN

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Copyright, 1905, by
Mabel MacCoy Irwin

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Of this book five hundred

copies have been printed and
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CONTENTS

Dedication 9

A Reflection n

I. Woman's Subordination . . *. 15

II. Generic Man 21

III. Whitman's Estimate of Woman 24

IV. Whitman Celebrates Two Great

Loves . 29

V. No Sex-Inequality 35

VI. Sex-Function and Parenthood . 37

VII. Changed Attitude Toward Sex 44

VIII. Whitman Needs No Apologist . 47

IX. Whitman's All-Inclusive Love . 52

X. Women's Misunderstanding of

Whitman 57

XI. Hamilton Mabie's Indictment . 58

XII. Sacredness of the Body ... 61

XIII. A Woman Waits for Me . . 63

8 CONTENTS

XIV. Motherhood Woman's Crown-
ing Attribute 67

XV. " Race Suicide " 70

XVI. Justified Motherhood ... 73
XVII. Woman's Sex Freedom Imper-
ative 74

XVIII. Whitman's Greatest Work for

Woman Yet to be Done . . 75
XIX. Woman's Indebtedness to Walt

Whitman . 77

To All Those

Who Esteem Truth above Opinion

Freedom above Custom, and

Love above Everything

A REFLECTION

In relation to Walt Whitman I feel
as " one born out of due time" That he
could have lived in my day, lived in my
land, lived in a city only a few miles away,
and I have made no pilgrimage to that
city and to him, seems to me now in-
credible. And yet I realize that, had I
made that pilgrimage, I might not have
known him, and, had I heard his words,
I might not have understood. Verily
one must be born again — born into the
life of conscious unity with the race —

ii

12 A REFLECTION

before Whitman can make himself felt,
or his words be understood; since

' Only themselves understand themselves and

the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls/'

I have but recently been born into the
kingdom of Whitman; I am therefore
but a little child — a little sister of the
" Great Companions!1 But none the
less I am their kin, and in the following
pages offer my tribute to the man who,
I believe, has left on record words so
infused with spirit and with life that they
will write and speak themselves into the
literature and language of the American
people in years to come, as the words

A REFLECTION 1 3

of no other poet that our nation has
produced.

His words do not clothe his thoughts
— this would be to hide them — they
incarnate his spirit , and it is true — as
those who experience their contact well
know — that he who touches them
" touches a man!} Through this con-
tact life is quickened, life}s horizon lifted,
and the meaning of life made plain.

Whitman is creating a " taste " for
himself; and I send forth this little book
with the hope that it may prove an in-
centive to others, tempting them to taste
of " heaves of Grass " find it good, and
be nourished thereby for further en-
deavor; with the hope that his words

14 A REFLECTION

will " itch at their ears " till they at last
be understood.

I had thought to embody other essays
herein, treating still further of woman 's
liberation; but I have decided to let this
interpretation of Whitman's message to
woman stand alone. My life has been
quickened and enriched by its writing; if,
in the reading, other lives than mine are
helped to feel with me the poet's quick-
ening touch, then the double reward of

receiver and giver is mine*

M. M. I.

* I have in process of preparation a book en-
titled " Woman's Sex-Emancipation," in which I
hope to treat the subject in a vital and thorough
manner.

Whitman

<Jbe fl>oet*%iberator of TOoman

" What place is besieged, and vainly
. tries to raise the siege?
Lot I send to that place a commander,

swift , brave, immortal;
And with him horse and foot — and

parks of artillery,
And artillery-men, the deadliest that
ever fired gun."

I. Woman's Subordination

ALT WHITMAN wrote
his " Leaves of Grass "
more than half a century
- ago. At that time woman's
position in the world — even in our new
world — was one of almost complete sub-
ordination. The teachings of the pulpit

15

1 6 WHITMAN

— though modified somewhat from the
barbarity of the church fathers — still
held her as mentally and spiritually infe-
rior to man ; silence upon all public or im-
portant matters was enjoined upon her;
and the old Pauline idea that if wives
would know anything they must ask their
husbands at home, still prevailed.

Economically woman was wholly de-
pendent upon man. Almost no avenues
of self-support were open to her. She
had no individual life of her own; it was
only in relation to father and husband
that any dignity whatever was allotted
to her; and to be known as the wife of
some man, or mother of his children,
wras considered sufficient honor for so
weak and inconsequential a vessel.

Looked down upon by church and

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 1 7

state; held economically dependent for
her very existence upon the caprice of
man; ground between the upper and
nether millstones of his alleged superior-
ity on the one hand, and her own phys-
ical necessity on the other, there was
but one way by which woman could sur-
vive, and that was through the avenue
of her sex.

She was like a city besieged; cut off
from her spiritual supplies above, cut off
from her material supplies beneath, the
tenure of her life became the tenure of
the parasite, and existence was impos-
sible save by subsisting on the life blood
of him who thus denied and subjected
her. As only by her could children be
born, or man's sensual appetite be
gratified, she was held as the means

1 8 WHITMAN

of perpetuating his name, acting the
part of household drudge, or used
as a toy to minister to his sex de-
mands.

A slave herself, she bore to her lord
and master slave children; and thus it
had been from the beginning — hu-
manity was groping in the darkness of
ignorance and bondage, unwittingly
shutting itself off from the light of free-
dom and truth.

Into such a state of the world, and
into such a condition for woman came
Walt Whitman with his " Leaves of
Grass " calling:

" What place is besieged, and vainly tries to

raise the siege?
Lo ! I send to that place a commander, swift,

brave, immortal;

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 19

And with him horse and foot — and parks of

artillery,
And artillery-men, the deadliest that ever

fired gun."

Whitman, with penetrating vision,
saw the knot of man's misconception
which held woman in bondage, and riv-
eted his own chains, and he set himself
to its untying. His was the universal
vision, and his a universal work. Wher-
ever humanity lay in the bondage of ig-
norance ; wherever wrongs held men and
women captive, he spoke the words to
let in the light, and he broke the chains
to set the captive free. To all places
besieged with errors — hoary with age
— he sent a commander — the swift,
brave, immortal words of truth. He
found woman — the mother of the race

20 WHITMAN

— in bondage, crushed under the heel
of her self-acknowledged inferiority,
with no poet to champion her cause or
set her free, and for her he began to sing
his immortal songs:

" Daughter of the lands did you wait for

your poet ?
Did you wait for one with a flowing mouth

and indicative hand?"

"I am the poet of the woman the same as the

man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to

be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the

mother of men."

From that time till now the siege has
been raised; the battle for one half hu-
manity's intellectual and economic free-

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 21

dom successfully waged, and the thought
has been insinuating itself into the mind
of the world, that woman is not only
somewhat in her relation to man; but
that she is an individual — with individ-
ual rights — in and of herself; that she
is not only wife and mother, but a human
being, first, last and always. Whitman
has written the songs of woman's deliv-
erance, let him who will write her laws.

II. Generic Man

IF you will read " Leaves of Grass "
with a discerning eye, you will see that
every message the poet brings to man as
an individual, he brings equally to wom-
an. He does not use the word " man '
in its generic sense, letting us infer that

22 WHITMAN

he means woman as well ; but he specifies,
leaving no room for doubt.

" The Female equally with the Male I sing."

" Only that which proves itself to man and
woman* is so."

" I launch all men and women* forward with
me into the unknown."

" And I say to any man or woman* Let your
soul stand cool and composed before a
million universes."

" What do you suppose I would intimate to
you in a hundred ways but that man or
woman* is as good as God."

" The great city is that which has the greatest
man or woman'' *

* These italics are mine. — The Author.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 23

It is just possible there comes to a man or
woman* the divine power to use words."

Then toward that man or woman* swiftly
hasten all."

I might go on indefinitely quoting his
words to show how entirely equal, to his
mind, are man and woman; but this suf-
fices to illustrate his method. Whitman
does not argue the matter, he simply
states the fact; he sows the seed of this
truth in the mind of the world, and then
continues his message to humanity with
woman as one of its prime factors.
Henceforth she was to be considered —
not as a means to an end — but as some-
what in and of herself. America —
" the great women's land! The fem-
inine! " had arrived.

24 WHITMAN

III. Whitman's Estimate of

Woman

IN his estimate of woman, Whitman
shows great keenness of analysis, great
breadth of vision, and great understand-
ing of the worth and dignity of the fem-
inine. He has given to the world a new,
a more complete estimate of woman than
literature has yet furnished, and he is
entitled to the distinction — as is no
other poet past or present — of being
the " Poet-Liberator of Woman." He
could not set her free — this is a work
she must do for herself; but he flashed
upon her a transcendent light, that she
might discover her own greatness — the
greatness of which she is still ignorant
— " Great, great, indeed, far greater

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 25

than they know is the sphere of woman."
He uncovered her to herself, that she
might know her own worth, then left her
afraid and abashed at her own unveiling.
Anne Gilchrist has said: "Whitman's
poems for woman are a veil woven
out of her own soul, never touched upon
even with a rough hand." This veil still
hides her from herself, and she does not
realize her own greatness or what Whit-
man has done for her deliverance.

' You womanhood divine, mistress and source
of all, whence life and love and aught
that comes from life and love."

1 Think of womanhood and you to be a

woman ;
The creation is womanhood;
Have I not said that womanhood involves all ?

26 WHITMAN

Have I not told how the universe has nothing
better than the best womanhood ? "

Yes, he has told it in many ways and
with a mighty tongue :

" Unfolded out of the folds of the woman,
man comes unfolded, and is always to
come unfolded;

Unfolded only out of the superbest woman of
the earth, is to come the superbest man of
the earth;

Unfolded only out of the friendliest woman,
is to come the friendliest man;

Unfolded only out of the perfect body of a
woman, can a man be form'd of perfect
body ;

Unfolded only out of the inimitable poem of
the woman, can came the poems of man —
(only thence have my poems come) ;

Unfolded out of the strong and arrogant
woman I love, only thence can appear
the strong and arrogant man I love;

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 27

Unfolded by brawny embraces from the well-
muscled woman I love, only thence come
the brawny embraces of the man;

Unfolded out of the folds of the woman's
brain, come all the folds of the man's
brain, duly obedient;

Unfolded out of the justice of the woman, all
justice is unfolded;

Unfolded out of the sympathy of the woman
is all sympathy:

A man is a great thing upon the earth, and
through eternity — but every jot of the
greatness of man is unfolded out of
woman,

First the man is shaped in the woman, he
can then be shaped in himself."

In this poem we see that Whitman
recognizes woman as at once the begin-
ning and end of all things; the crown-
ing work of creation. In her the circle
of life completes itself. From and by

28 WHITMAN

her, humanity exists and finds its source
and outlet again.

" Be not ashamed, women, your privilege en-
closes the rest and is exit of the rest,

You are the gates of the body, and you are
the gates of the soul.

" The female contains all qualities and tem-
pers them,

She is in her place and moves with perfect
balance,

She is all things duly veiled, she is both pas-
sive and active;

She is to conceive daughters as well as sons,
and sons as well as daughters.

" As I see my soul reflected in Nature,

As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible

completeness, sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the

breast, the Female I see."

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 2Q

Whenever I read these words descrip-
tive of the " eternal feminine " as Whit-
man saw her, I wish I were an artist that
I might paint this woman of " inex-
pressible completeness, sanity, beauty."
This woman with " bent head and arms
folded over the breast " — the attitude
of self-consecrated motherhood — that
I might make her immortal on canvas
as he has made her immortal with his
pen.

IV. Whitman Celebrates Two
Great Loves

WHITMAN celebrates two great
loves — the love of the sexes, and
the love of comrades ; he never confounds
the two, nor seeks to make the one take

30 WHITMAN

the place of the other. Each in its way
is distinct, supreme, eternal; both are
necessary to man's or woman's fulfill-
ment. " I will write," he says, " the
evangel-poem of comrades and of love."
To him these are the two great factors
of life, and he chants the utility and
beauty of the one as freely as the other.
The first great factor, sex, belongs to,
and is expressive of, the procreative urge
of the world —

" Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world, "

and the other to that sweet and satisfy-
ing relation of brother to brother, and
sister to sister, — comradeship — which
alone makes all sane living possible.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 3 1

" Fast-anchored, eternal, O love! O woman
I love!

0 bride! O wife! more resistless than I can

tell the thought of you!
Then separate, as disembodied or another born,
Ethereal, the last athletic reality, my consola-
tion,

1 ascend, I float in the regions of your love,

O man,

0 sharer of my roving life.

We may not conclude from this poem
that Whitman regarded comrade-love
as higher or more spiritual than sex-love
— only different.

1 Have you thought there could be but a single

Supreme?
There can be any number of Supremes — one
does not countervail another, any more
than one eyesight countervails another."

V-

32 WHITMAN

Man's love for woman anchors him

— holds him close to the heart of things

— is his harbor of peace, his rest, his
home ; while the comrade-love gives him
scope and breadth of companionship, as
he sails life's deep and trackless seas.

And yet our poet realized that the
most perfect sex-love involves all loves,
all relationships — completing itself in
comradeship ; for he sings :

" Lover divine and perfect comrade;
Waiting content, invisible yet, but certain.''

And again :

" Yet, O my Soul Supreme! . . .

Knowest thou prophetic joys of better, loftier

love's ideal — the divine wife, the sweet,

eternal, perfect comrade?"

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 33

It is said that Whitman never knew
a great love ; never awoke to the " master
passion "; that the only question he put
to everything — sex-love included —
was this: " Will it help breed one good-
shaped, well-hung man, and a woman to
be his perfect and independent mate? '
— all other love to him meant comrade-
ship. This may possibly be true; but he
laid the foundation upon which the
" master passion " must build, unless it
would forever leave tragedy in its wake
— - the foundation of the woman as the
independent mate of the man.

I cannot forego, however, the fol-
lowing exquisite love-lyric that he
gives us in " The Mystic Trumpter,"
in which the spirit of love itself seems
voiced :

34 WHITMAN

" Blow again trumpeter ! and for thy theme,
Take now the enclosing theme of all, the

solvent and the setting,
Love, that is pulse of all, the sustenance and

the pang,
The heart of man and woman all for love,
No other theme but love — knitting, enclosing,

all-diffusing love.

" O how the immortal phantoms crowd

around me!
I see the vast alembic ever working, I see and

know the flames that heat the world,
The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of

lovers,
So blissful happy some, and some so silent, dark

and night to death;
Love, that is day and night — love, that

mocks time and space,
Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with

perfume,
No other words but words of love, no other

thought but love."

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 35

V. No Sex-Inequality

IN the matter of sex-fulfillment, Whit-
man makes no distinction between
man and woman. He does not for a
moment allow that — in the nature of
things — their necessities are contradict-
ory; and this, too, in the face of man's
abnormal sex-development, and woman's
equally abnormal sex-deficiency — al-
though I doubt if this was as marked in
his day as in our own. He assumes that
what is integrally good for one, is good
for the other — admitting no inequality
here any more than elsewhere.

Any sane treatment of this subject
must admit that, while man and woman
are distinctive, they are yet complemen-

36 WHITMAN

tary, and there can be no real sex need
in the one, that is not met by and an-
swered to in the other. And it should
be plain to those who give sober thought
to the subject, that any state or condition
of civilization which decries or fails to
recognize this fact, is a false condition,
and a false civilization.

This false idea Whitman saw could
be remedied only by letting in upon it
the light of truth, bringing men and
women to a primal sanity; and there is
no doubt but that this full, wholesome
unveiled admiration and exaltation of
sex shall, in the end, prove the precipient
that shall order and direct it into chan-
nels of purity and health.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 37

VI. Sex-Function and Parenthood

IN Whitman's dealing with matters
of sex, there is one thing most notice-
able: he never dissociates the use of
sex-function from parenthood. He rec-
ognizes nothing of what Bernard Shaw
so cleverly satirizes as " the greatest in-
vention of the nineteenth century — the
artificial sterilization of marriage!"
Whitman sings of " What the divine
husband knows," of " the work of fa-
therhood," and of " the great chastity
of paternity ' in such language, that
it might be embodied in psalm and
sung in the congregations of the
righteous.

38 WHITMAN

" I shall demand perfect men and women out
of my love-spendings.

" I shall look for loving crops from the birth,
life, death and immortality I plant so lov-
ingly now."

And all this, too, at a time in our
history when to speak of the act of be-
getting in anything but a shamed whisper,
was to be considered bold and immodest
to the last degree. Many of us acquaint-
ed with the growing body of literature
upon this subject, and accustomed to
hear these things discussed in open meet-
ing, are not shocked to-day by his words ;
but when " Leaves of Grass " first saw
the light, even the far-seeing philoso-
phers felt that to speak of the sex-
passion with such utter openness of

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 39

approval, was to run the risk of
making void everything the poet had
written.

I know that there are those who claim
that Whitman's idea of love is of a trans-
itory and irresponsible nature — that
he believed in and advocated the yield-
ing to sex-impulse with no thought or
care for antecedents or consequents —
and there are some of his poems which,
on the surface, warrant this conclusion;
but it is a surface conclusion at best. It

is true that in some of his poems, notably :
One Hour to Madness and Joy " and
From Pent-Up Aching Rivers " we
catch this strain celebrating sex-delights,
as if pleasure alone were the end to be
sought. But even here we find these
words :

(<

u

40 WHITMAN

" O savage and tender achings!

I bequeath them to you, my children. "

And again:

" Singing the song of procreation,
Singing the need of superb children, and therein
superb grown people;

" I celebrate you act divine, and you children
prepared for."

In a recently published journal of his,
we find the following paragraph: " It is
said, perhaps rather quizzically, by my
friends, that I bring civilization, politics,
the topography of a country, and even
the hydrography, to one final test, —
the capability of producing, favoring,
and maintaining a fine crop of children
— a magnificent race of men and women.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 4 1

I must confess I look with comparative
indifference on all lauded triumphs of
the greatest manufacturing, exporting,
gold-and-silver-producing nation, in com-
parison with a race of really fine physical
perfectionists."

If ever there walked a man who felt
to fulness the purport of the saying, " No
man liveth to himself and no man dieth
to himself," that man was Walt Whit-
man. Every poem, every word springs
from and contributes to this sense of
unity with the race — with America
first, and after America with all the
world. He saw himself as a link in the
mighty chain of humanity, and every act
of his fraught with an eternal meaning.
What wrong, what folly then to read
into his words concerning sex — the very

42 WHITMAN

source of race continuity — a meaning
which would make of him a libertine,
with no thought or care except for that
which ministered to his immediate sense-
gratification.

As John Burroughs has pointed out
to us, had Whitman merely talked about
sex we should not have objected so; but
when he embodied sex-acts and repre-
sented himself as doing them, it seemed
time for the prudent to withdraw their
support.

His determination to^thus tregt._the
subject of sex was evidenced from the
beginning. In his first poem, " Start-
ing from Paumanok," he openly avows
his purpose; he tells in unmistakable
language what he is determined to
do:

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 43

" And sexual organs and acts! do you concen-
trate in me, for I am determined to tell
you with courageous, clear voice to prove
you illustrious.,,

And he declares elsewhere he will do
this, even though he stand sole among
men. He further tells us that it is his
conviction that " the repressing of any
direct statements concerning sex, has led
to states of ignorance, depletion and
covered-over disease, forming certainly
a main factor in the world's woe. A
non-scientific, non-aesthetic, and eminent-
ly a non-religious condition." To rem-
edy this he outlined an attitude; that it
should be taken for granted that " mo-
therhood, fatherhood, sexuality and all
that, belongs to them, can be asserted,
where it comes to question, openly, joy-

44 WHITMAN

ously, proudly, without shame or the
need of shame.

VII. Changed Attitude Toward
Sex

IN his " Backward Glance o'er trav-
eled Roads," Whitman tells us that
he felt the time had come when the at-
titude of " superior men and women '
must be changed towards things of sex,
and he set himself to bring about this
change. For this we should be eternally
grateful — even though he used severe
measures to accomplish his purpose. So
important did he consider this that he
says: " Of this feature intentionally
palpable in a few lines, I shall only say
the espousing principle of those lines so

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 45

gives breath of life to my whole scheme,
that the bulk of the pieces might as well
have been left unwritten were those lines
omitted "; and he asserts that his work
must stand or fall with them. He saw
that the perversions, abnormalities — as
well as the pathological conditions — of
sex, could be dealt with only by a frank
avowal of its usefulness, and the ardent
support of its inherent goodness and
beauty. And he says elsewhere, " Any-
thing short of this attitude impugns crea-
tion from the outset." And he adds:
" That is what I felt in my inmost heart
and brain, when I only answered Emer-
son's vehement arguments with silence,
under the old elms of Boston Common."
Whitman saw the danger that lay in
his words, and he says: " Nor will my

46 WHITMAN

poems do good only, they will do just
as much evil, perhaps more." This is
already proving itself true ; for there be
some who seek to excuse their loose and
lawless living by quoting the words of
Walt Whitman. At this, however, we
should not wonder, since only to him or
her who brings to these poems clean
thoughts and wholesome experience do
they convey their message of sweetness
and light. For — as Thoreau has said
— " For him to whom sex is impure,
there are no flowers in nature. "

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 47

VIII. Whitman Needs No
Apologist

I DO not take up my pen as an
apologist for Whitman — he needs
none; but it nevertheless is human-
ity's loss that he who has done so much
for the emancipation of the world from
its errors should still be so grossly mis-
understood. He knew that the ear of the
masses was closed to him in his day —
although he wrote for the masses. He
knew that he — as all prophets and
teachers of the past — must look to the
future for his vindication.

" Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what
I am for;

48 WHITMAN

But you — a new brood, native, athletic, con-
tinental — greater than before known —
Arouse! for you must justify me."

This is to be done, not by simply
expounding him in words — his words
are so simple that they expound them-
selves. Not by founding some school
in his name — this he distinctly pro-
scribed. His justification must come
from those who shall be like him in sen-
timent, vision and life — since they and
they alone can understand and justify
him.

" Only themselves understand themselves and

the like of themselves,
As souls only understand souls."

" Men like me," he says, — " also
women — our counterparts, perfectly

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 49

equal — will gradually get to be more
numerous — perhaps swiftly, in shoals. "

Whitman may have been over-san-
guine — ■ in his modesty — as to the time
when men and women like him should
appear in " shoals," but it is already true
that there is a rapidly increasing demand
for his words, showing that he has cre-
ated an appetite for himself, and many
are tasting and find him good. Never-
theless heavy clouds still hang above
some of his poems, through lack of
proper study, or clean minds of those
who read them.

To show how cruel, how crude, aye
how ludicrous has been the interpreta-
tion of some of his most exquisite poems,
take the one " To a Common Prosti-
tute, " so often quoted in derision:

50 WHITMAN

" Be composed — be at ease with me — I am
Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as
Nature,
Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you,
Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you
and the leaves to rustle for you, do my
words refuse to glisten and rustle for you."

Listening to the matchless music of
this poem's beginning, and catching
somewhat the spirit of its boundless
love, even shallow critics hesitate to dis-
approve; but when he adds:

" My girl, I appoint with you an appoint-
ment,"

they lose sight of his compassion, and
give to his words the meaning of a com-
mon liaison. Have you observed care-
fully what follows the words " My

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 5 1

girl, I appoint with you an appoint-
ment "?

" And I charge you that you make preparation

to be worthy to meet me.
And I charge you that you be patient and

perfect till I come."

Could any but Walt Whitman have
been so delicate, so chivalrous to de-
graded womanhood? Could any but
Walt Whitman restore the self-respect
of the poor creature — scorned even by
the man who pushes her to her self-
destruction? Behold the very essence
of chivalry! If there be those so blind
that they do not yet see the compassion
of this man, that made him one with all
the miserable and despised of the earth,
let them read his poem " The City Dead

52 WHITMAN

House," and there they will see one who
wept — not over the body of the dead
Lazarus — but over the unclaimed body
of the poor, dead, common prostitute.

IX. Whitman's All-Inclusive
Love

WHITMAN so loved the world
— just as it was — so loved men
and women — just as they were — wise
or foolish, pure or vile — that he was
determined none should escape his love.

" I make appointments with all.
I will not have a single person slighted or left
away."

Seeing in himself — and every man
— the germ of all evils as well as all

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 53

goods, he made himself one with the
evil-doer. He was not content when he
had made himself one with their sane
and natural delights, he would become
one with their brawlings and coarseness,
their looseness and vulgarity. He saw
that of all man's wanderings from his
primal sanity, he had gone the farthest
away in matters of sex, and so he would
swing him back to his reasonable, natural
orbit by going with him — if not in fact
then in sympathy — into the depths of
sexual vices, imputing them to himself.

" If you become degraded, criminal, ill, then I
become so for your sake."

Or as Burroughs so well says —
11 when the passion of human brother-
hood is upon him he is balked by nothing ;

54 WHITMAN

he goes down into the social mires to
find his lovers and equals."

In thus identifying himself with lewd
persons; in thus frankly imputing to
himself all sins men are guilty of; in
going into the depths to purify and lift
man to the sunlit heights, he has done
more to emancipate woman from her
sex-bondage, than all the preaching and
teaching she is likely to do in a hundred
years.

Men and women rise or fall together
— together they are bond or free — and
he who goes into the depths to liberate
man from the bondage of his own sen-
suality, snaps, at the same time, the
chain of woman, whom he enslaves.
" It was an heroic sacrifice, and atones
for the sins of us all — the sins of per-

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 55

verting, denying, and abasing the most
sacred and important organs and func-
tions of our bodies" to our peril, and
the peril of generations to come.

' Through me " — he cries — " forbidden
voices ;

Voices of sexes and lusts; voices veiled and I
remove the veil,

Voices indecent by me clarified and trans-
figured. . . ."

" Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy
whatever I touch or am touched from."

' The armies of those I love engirth me and

I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them,

respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full

with the charge of the soul."

56 WHITMAN

And in that poem, " Native Mo-
ments," in which he seems to revel in
looseness and indecency, we find these
words at its conclusion:

" O you shunned persons I at least do not

shun you.
I come forthwith in your midst, I will be your

poet,
I will be more to you than to any of the rest."

If they made their bed in hell, in hell
he would be with them. Let those of
us to whom vicarious atonement has
been a mystery till now, see the greatest
of all object lessons, Walt Whitman;
for verily he has borne our sins and
iniquities, and by his stripes shall we be
healed.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 57

X. Women's Misunderstanding of
Whitman

IT is true that most women misunder-
stand Whitman, equally with men;
and yet he felt assured that woman
would understand him.

" To women certain whispers of myself be-
queathing, their affection me more clearly
explaining.,,

The poems which especially repel
women are those in which he treats of
the intimate relation of the sexes. When
they read those poems they have a sense
of outraged privacy ; they feel that some-
thing that should be sacred between
lovers has been dragged into public view,

58 WHITMAN

and given public utterance — apparently
to no purpose. It seems like an expose
of that which, by its nature, should al-
ways remain covered — that which em-
bodies the mystery of creation.

XI. Hamilton Mabie's Indictment

THE most sweeping indictment that
has appeared of late upon this part
of his work is from the pen of Hamilton
Mabie. He says:

" The lack of fineness in Whitman;
the insensibility to the appeal of the
spiritual qualities of character . . . are
very obvious when one studies his work
in relation to women. There is nowhere
any touch of that spiritual chivalry
which nearly all the great poets have

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 59

shared. . . . The dream of fair wom-
an seems never to have come to Whit-
man; if it had, he could not possibly
have treated the most intimate relation
between man and woman, as if it were
a public function. " " And," he adds,
" this is the more singular, because his
was not a purely masculine genius ; there
was a large infusion of the feminine in
it — a certain diffused softness of feel-
ing, a brooding affection." He also
says that Whitman was not lacking in
the imaginative faculty; but that " he
had the richest endowment of imagina-
tion that has yet been bestowed upon
any American poet."

Now it would seem strange that a man
with a " large infusion of the feminine "
in his nature, combined with an un-

60 WHITMAN

rivalled imagination, should have utterly

failed in any true appreciation of the
feminine, or of the sacredness of sex. Is
it not more likely that this titanic moral-
ist had an underlying purpose, a purpose
so great that it warranted this drastic
treatment, this heroic method? Is it
not more likely that this man of mighty
insight diagnosed the disease that is eat-
ing out the heart of the world — the
degradation and shame of sex — and
probed it to the quick?

" Do you guess I have some intricate purpose?
Well, I have; for the April rain has, and the
mica on the side of a rock has."

When speaking of diseased sex-symp-
toms, he says: "Literature is always
calling in the doctor for consultation and

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 6 1

confession, and always giving evasions
and swathing suppressions in place of
that ' heroic nudity ' on which only a
genuine diagnosis of serious cases can
be built."

XII. Sacredness of the Body

WALT WHITMAN was con-
vinced that the only way to re-
deem sex, and all that pertains to it,
from the shame which surrounds it, from
that " sneaking, furtive, mephitic " at-
mosphere which pervades society and
literature whenever sex is mentioned,
was — first of all, to take it out of the
realm of the hidden, the unfamiliar,
bring it into the light, and deal with it
Sat first hand-

62 WHITMAN

" Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile,
and none shall be less familiar than the
rest."

And his " Children of Adam " poems
were written with a determined effort to
impress the mind with the beauty and
grandeur of the body. He sings of it
in the same wondering and caressing
manner that he sings of the " Splendid,
silent sun," " The voluptuous, cool-
breathed earth," or " The capricious
and dainty sea." He makes of the body
a sacred thing.

" The man's body is sacred, and the woman's
body is sacred.

" O, I say, these are not the parts and poems of

the body only, but of the soul.
O, I say now, these are the soul ! "

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 63

Walt Whitman has taken the human
body — with all its parts and functions
— and translated it into the substance of
the soul, If this were his only work, his
name would merit a place among the
immortals.

XIII. A Woman Waits for Me

HIS poem " A Woman Waits for
Me " — at once a morsel for
his enemies, a puzzle to his critics, and
a stumbling-block to his friends — is
essentially a " poem of procreation " —
and was so named when first published.
It carries within itself its own justifica-
tion. Written a half century ago, it is
easily classified as prophetic. It portrays
a type of woman that Whitman saw

64 WHITMAN

should some day appear — the type of
woman that would respond to only such
as he. It is a detailed description of
her whom we now delight to call the
" new woman " — a type of her in all
things save that of sex-appreciation ; for
of this she is still ashamed or fancies
herself outgrown.

" They know how to swim, row, ride, wrestle,
shoot, run, strike, retreat, advance, resist,
defend themselves,

They are ultimate in their own right — they
are calm, clear, well-possess'd of them-
selves." *

Here is another prophecy: " I say an
unnumbered new race of hardy and
well-defined women are to spread
through all these states. I say a girl fit

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 65

for these states must be free, capable,
dauntless, just the same as a boy."

In the " Song of the Broadaxe " he
sketches for us yet another and all-
inclusive type — finer than any — the
picture of free, majestic womanhood:

" Her shape arises,

She less guarded than ever, yet more guarded

than ever,
The gross and soiled she moves among do not

make her gross and soiPd,
She knows the thoughts as she passes, nothing

is conceal'd from her
She is none the less considerate or friendly

therefor,
She is the best belov'd, it is without exception,

she has no reason to fear, and she does

not fear,
Oaths, quarrels, hiccupp'd songs, smutty ex-
pressions, are idle to her as she passes,

66 WHITMAN

She is silent, she is possessed of herself, they

do not offend her,
She receives them as the laws of Nature receive

them, she is strong,
She too is a law of Nature — there is no law

stronger than she is."

Whitman saw that the power to
create a new world — wherein should
walk lovers and comrades — lay in the
hands of such women as these. Not by
laborious effort to reform the already
born criminal, but, by mothering a
new race, rightly conceived. He says
of himself that he was " well-begotten
and rais'd by a perfect mother." And
he tells us that he has sometimes thought,
indeed, that the sole avenue and means
of a reconstructed sociology depend,
primarily, on a new birth, elevation,

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 6^

expansion, invigoration of woman, af-
fording for races to come (as the con-
ditions that antedate birth are indis-
pensible) a perfect motherhood. "

XIV. Motherhood Woman's
Crowning Attribute

AGAIN he says: " Maternity is
woman's crowning attribute; ever
making her — in loftiest spheres —
superior to the man." Whitman has
made woman the equal of man every-
where else, now he tells us of her
superior function, motherhood. This
superior endowment of woman has al-
ways called forth from man something
akin to worship. The master paintings
of the world have had for their inspira-

68 WHITMAN

tion a mother with her babe at her
breast — at once the source and sus-
tenance of all living things. And to-day
— - despite the sex bondage of the most
of womankind — motherhood still com-
pels man's homage and respect

The worship that woman naturally
receives and accepts from the man who
loves her, arises — whether either
knows it or not — from the fact of her
potential motherhood — the eternal
mystery of creation, that finds its culmi-
nation in her — and woe is she when
the conditions of maternity are made
for her so hard that she must needs
divest herself of that crown.

In Whitman's poem of " Faces " he
paints for us this picture:

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 69

" Behold a woman !

She looks out from her quaker cap — her face

is clearer and more beautiful than the sky.
She sits in an arm-chair, under the shaded

porch of the farm-house,
The sun just shines on her old white head.

" The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot

go, and does not wish to go,
The justified mother of men."

This, too, belongs largely to the
poems of prophecy; for neither in his
day nor yet in our own, has mother-
hood been justified. Let the crime of
abortion — which is so common to-day
that scarcely a home can be found
where murdered infancy lifts not its
dumb cry — bear witness that my words
are the words of soberness and of truth.

70 WHITMAN

XV. " Race Suicide "

THERE is a protest at the present
time that America's birthrate is
decreasing ; that the native stock is dying
out, and that the extinction of the Amer-
ican race is impending. The immigra-
tion statistician tells us that this comes
as the result of the large foreign ele-
ment, which so reduces the wages of
our workmen, that their children " have
never been born."

The sociologist finds the reason in
" the prosperity of the country which
always breeds vices side by side with its
luxuries — the chief vice being the
shirking of the responsibility of a
family," and he tells us that " Race sui-

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 7 1

cide " is not so much due to the struggle
for existence, as the outcome of selfish
affluence.

Both of these statements contain,
without doubt, a modicum of truth;
but we must look deeper for the real
cause of the decrease of a nation's
birthrate.

Motherhood has not been " justi-
fied " ! Our children, for the most
part, are born — not of mothers — - but
of wives in the performance of their
" marital duties " ! Motherhood is
forced upon woman — she has no
choice as to when or how many children
she shall bear. Long has she felt the
injustice of this position; long has she
secretly rebelled. She has been made
to see that there is no dignity in en-

72 WHITMAN

forced motherhood — all the moralists
to the contrary notwithstanding — and
she is refusing to bear unwelcome chil-
dren. She has become skillful in the
use of drugs, appliances and multiform
methods of prevention, and these she
uses to escape conception. If wives
have not yet found the way of freedom
from sex-slavery, they have found the
way of sterility, and it is to the use of
such knowledge as this, that our statis-
ticians must look to discover the prime
reason of a nation's lowered birthrate.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 73

XVI. Justified Motherhood

JUSTIFIED motherhood we shall
never have, until we have free, in-
telligent and self-determined mothers.
Neither enforced motherhood, nor
mechanically hindered motherhood can
ever be justified. When at last, driven
by her pain and despair at the ig-
norant perversion and betrayal of her
love to the demands of lust, woman
rises into the consciousness that in her
hands rests the future welfare of the
world; into the consciousness that she
is indeed " the gates of the body and
the gates of the soul " and keeps guard
over that sacred portal, then — and not
till then — may we rightfully sing of
"The Justified Mother of Men."

74 WHITMAN

XVII. Woman's Sex Freedom
Imperative

WOMAN'S political and economic
freedom are important; her
religious freedom is necessary; but her
sex-freedom — freedom to control her
own life-giving function — is impera-
tive — not only for her own further
development, but for the development
of the race. Without this, her political,
economic, and even her religious free-
dom, are mere, meaningless words, —
mere palliatives, which dull the pain
of her galling chains and keep her
from discovering the real source of her
bondage, and which way her freedom
lies.

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 75

Since motherhood is " woman's
crowning attribute — ever making her
in loftiest spheres superior to the man "
— how evident it becomes that until in
this loftiest sphere she is recognized as
supreme — and her will becomes the
law of man — nothing in the world
can find its true relation, or any of the
great problems of life be truly solved.

XVIII. Whitman's Greatest Work
for Woman Yet to be Done

IN helping to this, Whitman's great-
est work for woman is yet to be
accomplished; and that America may
not lose sight of the all-important issue
he puts this final, this test question to
her:

76 WHITMAN

" With all thy gifts, America,

Standing secure, rapidly tending, overlooking

the world,
Power, wealth, extent, vouchsafed to thee —

with these and like of these vouchsafed

to thee,
What if one gift thou lackest (the ultimate

human problem never solving)
The gift of perfect women fit for thee —

what if that gift of gifts thou lackest?
The towering feminine of thee? the beauty,

health, completion, fit for thee ?
The mothers fit for thee?

The women of America must and
will answer this question. To them
the daughters of all other lands are
looking for the way of deliverance.
Motherhood must be free ! Mother-
hood shall be justified!

THE POET-LIBERATOR OF WOMAN 77

XIX. Woman's Indebtedness to
Walt Whitman

AND ages hence — when woman's
sex-hondage is as a dream for-
gotten, when she stands regnant by
divine right — the self-elected mother
of a new race — she shall remember
with deepest gratitude the name of
him who called to her while she was
yet asleep, who sang for her while she
was yet in chains, and whose songs did
more to set her free than all the songs
that were ever sung — the name of
Walt Whitman.

LofC.